Sunday, January 8, 2012

Clearly the article I just finished gets the award for "Most Edited." I'd like to think that's not because it was a disaster, but because the editor saw some glimmer of hope in the thing. "Light in the Cellar of the Sea," an article about bioluminescence in the deep sea, is scheduled for publication in February of 2012 in ChemMatters.

Lately, I've been polishing a small article, readying it for review by my writing friends. Line #4 was one of those lines that had to be hammered out a zillion different ways. I tried to analyze why the line wasn't working. The action was fluid until it got to that point then it became more like steps. Finally, after reworking it many times (15-20), I heaved the line altogether. It still didn't work. The impact of the last line in the paragraph had diminished. Finally, I found an excellent solution by lengthening the last line in the paragraph (the new line #4).

I posted some more photographs from a hike around Breakneck Pond at Bigelow Hollow State Park. What we both thought was a 4 mile hike ended up taking us 4+ hours. There were ridge trails on either side of this pond that reduced the sunlight faster when the sun set.